‘The New Mutants’ Scares Up a New Poster and Teases a Demonic Villain

In case there were any doubt regarding writer / director Josh Boone’s assertion that The New Mutants is a horror film, the new poster and teaser should clarify things pretty quickly. The latest poster for the X-Men spinoff features faces screaming in agony (scary!), while the new teaser eerily foreshadows the film’s villain — lifted straight from the pages of the Marvel comic book series.

First up is that poster, and while it’s stylish in its own strange way (the yellow text and font combo is especially striking), I’m not 100 percent digging the faces mashed through a stretchy wall aesthetic:

More intriguing is the latest teaser from the film’s official Instagram account:

A post shared by New Mutants (@newmutantsfilm) on Dec 4, 2017 at 10:00am PST

Early on in production, Boone revealed an animatic for the film that featured Demon Bear — the mutant villain co-created by Chris Claremont. Boone and co-writer Knate Gwaltney are huge fans of that particular storyline, but it’s not clear exactly how they’ve incorporated it into The New Mutants. In the comics, Demon Bear was created by demonically mutating the parents of Danielle Moonstar, aka Mirage. The creature haunted her dreams and threatened to kill her, culminating in a showdown that left Mirage severely injured. (There’s also some stuff in there about demonic Native American warriors and characters being turned into Native Americans…yeah).

Mirage is not featured in The New Mutants movie, and it’s entirely plausible that Boone and Gwaltney gave the character a new origin story that sidesteps some of the potentially problematic elements.